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A mermaids treasure

Inspiration

This card was inspired by a post from Cindy of Plant’s list, who had made a card with the mermaid image. I liked her very much, the style reminded me of cartoons I read when I was younger. I also thought I saw them before, and indeed I saw them in another of Cindy’s blogpost: A few offerings. Now I have probably seen them at other blogs / challenges as well, as I did recognize the name of “A day for Daisies”, which is the shop of the author of the image. So I hopped on over there, and saw it was a freebie this month! wauw! So I loaded my cart full of freebies, and because I kind of feel guilty taking so much free stuff, I also bought this one:

Girls & Play category: Swing in a Snow Globe An image of a beautiful girl swinging peacefully on a swing hanging from a tree, encased inside…

Isn’t that a cute one? I see many possibilities on cards for her. I wanted to use the mermaid image. Although I never had a thing for underwater scenes, always stayed clear of the underwaterness and fishy things, I have recently got a lovely mermaid set from Chocolate Baroque, and got really into the underwater thing. I love it now!

I searched for some new challenges to participate in, and I came up with one that provided a sketch, one required something new, one that required a quote, and an anything goes challenge.

What did I do?

So I started out with the digital image. I did a test print, and then I printed it on some cardstock background which I had made a while ago, it was purple cardstock with blue distress ink in watery stripes and splots (pressed on it with an acrylic block).

Then I started colouring with blue pencil, but didn’t like how the purple still shone through. I chose blue because she’s after all half fish, and fishes can have any colour. So my mermaids have a variety of skin colours, as I take my inspiration from fish rather then humans. And I don’t know that much about fish, so it’s all imagination, hehe. Anyway, Too much purple. After the pencil, I painted a bit with distress ink (I looooove doing that! just stamp your inkpad on an acryllic block, spritz some water over it, and there’s your “paint”), but it stlil wasn’t entirely right. But I moved on to the hair. Again, pencil and distress ink with water. But still she didn’t pop out enough, so gel pen, and then I took out my acryllic paint, white paint, and made the space around her whiter. Especially the edges, as it’s further away from her. I added some of the paint to a spritz of water, and then smoothed it out on her body and hair. Unfortunately that also covered / wiped out (printer ink isn’t waterproof) some of the details in the hair. But that is no big deal to me. I also altered her eyelid a tiny bit, as she had a slightly arrogant look first which didn’t fit with my idea of her on my card. Perfect for other occasions but not this one.

Next step: A Crafters template (the tree one) to be used as coral on the background card, the paper behind her. I sponged it in a light colour as it had to be very subtle, broken china. Oh wait, tumbled glass, I keep mixing them up. I know I did so in other posts. Next, I wanted the coral / seagrass to be over the mermaid, so I layed her on the card and sponged through it with mossy distress ink (wrong name, I know, but it’s that one colour, that mossy one…) I decided some embossing was needed. I mixed adirondack Stream and Distress shabby shutter powder, and embossed that onto her and the card beneath.

Next the strip on the side, I love that stamp from Design by Ryn. I love all stamps of her which I got, and more :P. That is one strip of paper, from beneath the seashell to the other side of the card. Sort of air bubbles. I knew from after making the embossed seaweed I wanted to use more seaweed, and I thought of my decoration wool and merino wool I had. The merino wool is very soft and actually ment to be used in wetfelting, but I’m not very good at that. I let my sister Kim from Viltalakim do that. I made a background, used a stamp from the previously mentioned Chocolate Baroque set on it, cut it out and placed the wool under and between it. Next was the little rocks. And then I noticed the pearls I have, so I added some to her hair, like she has just found them between the rocks. She forgot one though, can you see it? When gluing the stones to the card I added some glitter as well, also a tiny bit in her hair (remember she just had been digging through the rocks).

This picture taken in the evening with aritifical lighting shows it quite well:

Quote

The last part was the quote. My oh my, was it hard to find a good one. I spent like an hour searching for a song I heard (or come across) a while ago through a challenge. But which challenge, and how long ago? I remembered Nick Cave of Kylie Minogue. Some random lyrics I sort of remember “Hands on my chest, filled with my hatred for you. From under here. “A woman lying still under water, seen from under water. A song similar to “Where the wild roses grow”. Eventually I found it. It was “Little Water”, performed by Ute Lemper. The song was a bit too sad though, when and to whom should I give a card with a quote from that song? So on I sought, and then I found a beautiful one.

“Drive into the sea of thought and find there pearls beyond the price”

It was almost perfect, but I suspected the quote wasn’t right. It sounded like bad english, so I search a bit more, and then I found the author and the correct quote:

“Dive into the sea of thought and find there pearls beyond price”

By Ibn Ezra

The first link to it in my searchbox is to quotationspage.com, no idea if the site is thrustworthy so visit at your own risk!

Font

Next I had to search for a font to use, as my handwriting is poorly and to be honest, making sentences with individual letter stamps is just not my thing. I was in doubt between two fonts: Algerian or Old printing press. (links might not be the exact font or site I got them from, but that was long ago, I don’t remember where I got them). I chose the last one, as it seemed like the letters had some sort of algae to them, it fit under water. I taped some tissue paper to a sheet of thicker paper, printed it, tore it out (don’t cut, tearing blends better) and decoupaged it onto the card. Then I noticed it was a little bit too fuzzy, too much algae covering my letters! So I made them stand out more, especially the word sea, and I edited all letter “r”s, as they had a dot above them that made it almost look like a “t”.

Pfew. Are you still here? It’s a long post, I know. Onto the materials used!

Just for Fun – Anything goes (aaarh only 3 more hours till closing, where’s the publish button!!!) This is my 2nd entry, I noticed I named my other entry wrong, I thought it was a caption for my card instead of a place for my name 😛 So it’s under Wedding Anniversary)

The inside of the card. I thought it was a shame to cut off this strip of paper, as I liked it. So I just folded it over and glued it to the inside.

Hi Debbie – thanks for visiting my blog and wow – I am blown away by your comment! Thank you so much. I feel honored to have one of my cards CASEd, although I am not sure if you really saw it on my blog. But – I have a review search on it, where I do a monthly collage of almost all of the cards I made the previous month and perhaps you can find it there. Here is the link:http://fun-stamping.blogspot.com/search/label/Review
If not, you probably CASEd sombody elses card – i have the same problem, that I sometimes see something I really like and incorporate it and then I can’t remember who it was and I can’t give credit….but I do try. I appreciate your effort.

Hello Debbie, wow! I love that you took the time to write out your process. Right down to the font! The little textured details that you used really add to the piece. Took me a moment to find Sea Bubbles Set in there because you blended it into the background so nicely. Thanks for the kind words and for sharing your art with me 🙂

Thank you for your comment! Yes the stamp is a little hidden, which is a bit of a shame as it was a really pretty piece of paper, but I wanted the pieces of wool to be flowing out of the plant and behind the mermaid-frame. It does continue on the inside though! I’ll add a picture of that as well. 🙂

It is always a little gift when someone took the time to comment, feedback is much appreciated. / Het is een klein cadeautje wanneer iemand een reactie achterlaat, feedback wordt gewaardeerd! Cancel reply

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Welcome!

Hello, welcome to my blog! I am...
Debbie (nickname Daqa); the partner of a wonderful man; mother of 3 kids (2011, 2013, 2014); sister; aunt; Dutch; dog and cat lover; gamer (or should I say geek?); IT-consultant living in Bunde, Zuid-Limburg, The Netherlands. I love to try out different crafts, but mostly, I like to make paper things.

My blog is about crafting, and my life and things I find interesting. (pictures I've taken, events in my life and things or ideas I find worth thinking about). I hope you enjoy reading my blog! Still want to know more about me and my blog? Click the image!

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